Aravind Srinivas unveils the secrets behind Perplexity AI's meteoric ...

Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, recently shared his leadership insights during a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The conversation offered a unique window into his strategies for building a successful AI startup since its founding in 2022.

Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine that has a Chat-GPT style user interface and allows generates answers using web sources and most importantly cites links in the responses.

In his recent peer-led interview with Stanford, Srinivas discussed topics ranging from assembling a team with complementary skills to navigating the challenges of scaling an organization. These principles have been integral to Perplexity’s rise as a major player in the generative AI space.

In the earliest stages of Perplexity, Srinivas focused on recruiting co-founders and team members whose skills complemented his own. “One quality, I would say, you look for your founding team is, obviously, people with complimentary skills. You don’t want to be as good as them in what they excel at. Ideally, they should be a lot better,” he noted. This approach allowed him to avoid micromanaging and instead trust team members to excel in their areas of expertise. Over time, the company has followed a similar philosophy, bringing on individuals with fresh perspectives and new skill sets.

READ: AI startup Perplexity nears $9 billion valuation amid copyright lawsuits from publishers (November 6, 2024)

Srinivas also highlighted the importance of maintaining a “bias for action” within the company. As Perplexity grew to nearly 100 employees, he emphasized the need to sustain the agility and speed typically associated with startups. Reflecting on advice he received—from a founder that he really admired—about the challenges of scaling, he shared: “Once you get to 100 people, you’re guaranteed to move slow. So far, so good [at Perplexity], but I’m determined to solve that problem.”

Another key aspect of Srinivas’ leadership approach is taking chances on individuals who may not have traditional expertise in a given area but show potential. “Giving people who haven’t necessarily become experts at one thing the opportunity to go do something they’re not yet proven for is something I’ve done a lot,” he said. He believes this method fosters innovation and resilience within the team.

Launched in 2022, Perplexity quickly gained traction in the competitive AI market, attracting significant investor interest. Notable backers include Nvidia, Databricks, and Y Combinator’s Garry Tan. By 2023, Perplexity achieved a valuation nearing $9 billion, driven by its innovative search engine that combines multiple large language models to deliver accurate and rich responses. The platform reportedly receives 100 million queries weekly and generates around $50 million in annual revenue.

READ: OpenAI hopes to hit 1 billion users with Apple partnership (December 3, 2024)

However, Perplexity’s journey hasn’t been without challenges. The company faced copyright infringement lawsuits from major publishers, including News Corp, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, over the alleged misuse of proprietary content. Srinivas has defended Perplexity’s practices, asserting that it operates as an aggregator that provides proper attribution to original sources. He reiterated this stance during his Stanford talk, emphasizing the company’s commitment to “summarize, synthesize from diverse sources, and make sure to give credit to all the original sources.”

To address the concerns of publishers, Srinivas has proposed revenue-sharing partnerships and hinted at launching an advertising program to create a more sustainable ecosystem for content creators and aggregators alike.

As Perplexity continues its rapid growth, Srinivas’ leadership exemplifies the balance between innovation and responsibility. When asked why democratizing access to knowledge is so important, Srinivas answered that it is “a moral duty for all of us to seek wisdom and become perpetual learning machines.”

Rumaisa Khusru

Rumaisa Khusru is a recent MSc graduate from the University of Oxford in Applied Linguistics, with a focus on Neurolinguistics. She completed an Oxford Scholarship program in Japan earlier this year. She has been a reporter and editor for publications like the Cherwell and Oxford Blue newspapers at Oxford, a researcher and writer at the International Business Times in Bangalore and editor-in-chief of Ethos magazine during her undergraduate years in Jeddah.